Prisms (Altea)
It was a rainbow impossibly
beautiful, straddling the town
with one foot poised lightly on the sea
and the other set atop the mountain
behind us. It was a fairy-tale
rainbow if there ever was one.
For days rain had made a jail
of the world, but now Emmett and I
were out walking; when we stopped to marvel
at the banded color and he asked, Why
are there rainbows? I explained how water,
a prism, builds archways in the sky.
Days later, as we sat together
in the plaza, each with paper and pen
to write or draw, Emmett's clear
plastic ballpoint bent the sun-
light into a rainbow on his wrist.
We both laughed: it was small and thin
but there it was. Who could have guessed
prisms wait in disguise right under
our noses, that when you least
expect it a prism will appear,
breaking the light to show its color?
Philip Dacey
More Poems
Out of
the Box Coaching and
Breakthroughs with the Enneagram,
Mary R. Bast, Ph.D.
Copyright © 1999. All rights reserved.
Revised:
October 14, 2009
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